“Sharp rebukes make sound Christians” was a proverb among them.  They sometimes lost their tempers, and sometimes their parishes, but never their independence.  I find a hundred anecdotes of conscientious cruelty laid up against them, but not one of cowardice or of compromise.  They may have bored the tongues of others with a bar of iron, but they never fettered their own tongues with a bar of gold,—­as some African tribes think it a saintly thing to do, and not African tribes alone.

There was such an absolute righteousness among them, that to this day every man of New-England descent lives partly on the fund of virtuous habit they accumulated.  And, on the other hand, every man of the many who still stand ready to indorse everything signed by a D.D.—­without even adding the commercial E.E., for Errors Excepted—­is in part the victim of the over-influence they obtained.  Yet there was a kind of democracy in that vast influence also:  the Puritans were far more thorough Congregationalists than their successors; they recognized no separate clerical class, and the “elder” was only the highest officer of his own church.  Each religious society could choose and ordain its own minister, or dispense with all ordaining services at will, without the slightest aid or hindrance from council or consociation.  So the stern theology of the pulpit only reflected the stern theology of the pews; the minister was but the representative man.  If the ministers were recognized as spiritual guides, it was because they were such to the men of their time, whatever they might be to ours.  Demonax of old, when asked about the priests’ money, said, that, if they were really the leaders of the people, they could not have too much payment,—­or too little, if they were not.  I believe that on these conditions the Puritan ministers well earned their hundred and sixty pounds a year, with a discount of forty pounds, if paid in wampum-beads, beaver-skins, and musket-balls.  What they took in musket-balls they paid back in the heavier ammunition of moral truth.  Here is a specimen of their grape-shot:—­“My fathers and brethren,” said John Higginson, “this is never to be forgotten, that our New England is originally a plantation of religion, and not a plantation of trade.  Let merchants and such as are making cent. per cent. remember this.  Let others who have come over since at sundry times remember this, that worldly gain was not the end and design of the people of New England, but religion.  And if any man among us make religion as twelve and the world as thirteen, let such a man know he hath neither the spirit of a true New-England man, nor yet of a sincere Christian.”

* * * * *

THOREAU’S flute.

  We, sighing, said, “Our Pan is dead;
    His pipe hands mute beside the river;—­
    Around it wistful sunbeams quiver,
  But Music’s airy voice is fled. 
  Spring mourns as for untimely frost;
    The bluebird chants a requiem;
    The willow-blossom waits for him;—­
  The Genius of the wood is lost.”